DAMAGED together they become dangerous, that they have a kind of pathological synergy, that, like the ingredients of a bomb, they are troublesome individually but explo- sive in combination Several years ago, Lewis and some colleagues did a followup study of ninety- five male juveniles she and Pincus had first worked with in the late nineteen- seventies, in Connecticut. She broke the subjects into several groups: Group 1 consisted of those who did not have psychiatric or neurological vulnerabilities or an abusIve childhood; Group 2 consisted of those WIth vWnerabilities but no abuse at home; Group 3 con- sisted of those with abuse but no vulnerabilities; yet another group consisted of those with abuse and extensive vWnerabilities. Seven years later, as adults, those in Group 1 had been arrested for an average of just over two criminal offenses, none of which were violent, so the result was essentially no jail time. Group 2, the psychiatrically or neurologically impaired kids, had been convicted of an average of almost ten offenses, two of which were violent, the result being just under a year of j ail time. Group 3, the abused kids, had 11.9 of- fenses, 1.9 of them violent, the result be- ing five hundred and SIXty-two days in jail. But the group of children who had the most vWnerabilities and abuse were in another league entirely. In the interven- ing seven years, they had been arrested for, on average, 16.8 cnmes, 5.4 of which were violent, the result being a thousand two hundred and fourteen days in prison. In another study on this topic, a Uni- versity of Southern California psycholo- gist named Adrian Raine looked at four thousand two hundred and sixty-nine male children born and living in Den- mark, and classified them according to two variables. The first was whether there were complications at birth-which cor- relates, loosely, with neurological im- pairment. The second was whether the child had been rejected by the mother (whether the child was unplanned, un- wanted, and so Iorth)-which correlates, loosely, with abuse and neglect Looking back eighteen years later, Raine found that those children who had not been re- jected and had had no birth complica- tions had roughly the same chance of be- coming criminally violent as those with only one of the risk factors-around .,-- t three per cent. For the children with both complications and rejection, however, the risk of violence tripled: in fact, the chil- dren with both problems accounted for eighteen per cent of all the violent crimes, even though they made up only 4.5 per cent of the group. There is in these statIstics a power- ful and practical suggestion for how to prevent crime. In the current ideologi- cal climate, liberals argue that fighting crime requires fighting poverty, and conservatives argue that ...tr M fighting crime requires ever more police and prisons; both of these things may be true, but both are also daunting. The studies suggest that there may be instances in which more modest interventions can bring large dividends. Criminal behavior that is associated with specific neurological problems is behavior that can, potentially, be diagnosed and treated like any other illness. Aheady, for example, researchers have found drugs that can mimic the cor- tical function of moderating violent be- havior. The work is preliminary but promising. "We are on the cusp of a revolution in treating these conditions," Stuart Yudofsky told me. 'We can use anticonvulsants, antidepressants, anti- hypertensive medications. There are medications out there that are F.D.A.- approved for other conditions which have profound effects on mitigating aggression." At the prevention end, as well, there's a strong argument for establishing aggres- sive child -abuse-prevention programs. Since 1992, for example, the National Committee to Prevent Child Abuse, a not-for-profit advocacy group based in Chicago, has been successfully promot- ing a program called Healthy Families America, which, working with hospitals, prenatal clinics, and physicians, identifies mothers in stressful and potentially abu- sive situations either before they give birth or immediately afterward, and then provides them with weekly home visits, counselling, and support for as long as five years. The main thing holding back nationwide adoption of programs like this is money: Healthy Families America costs up to two thousand dollars per fam- ily per year, but if we view it as a crime- prevention measure that's not a large sum. These ideas, however, force a change in the way we think about criminality. Advances in the understanding of human - 'f 'iI ' íJ i. 145 "Sternfeld has devised a Baedeker to America in the age of anxiety, fear, and moral crisis." V k G Idb g - IC I 0 er, The New York Times ,V ON THIS SITE LANDSCAPE IN MEMORIAM PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOEL STERNFELD 1 ; r ) J \ o(lr ) I 1 e l .L \... \- oIly ldd I\.IIlg A tree in a park, a section of road, a little girl's bedroom, a billboard. All of them eerily familiar. Looking at these sites, I think: I have been here before, I know this place. The longer I look the more complicated these seemingly simple scenes become. On This SIte becomes a subtle collision/collusion in which esthetic beauty torques against the facts of life." -A. M. Homes, Artforum ,.. '\< );. \ l - \ 1 1 i J, 1 drIll L u t 11 e r 1 n g J r 1'- a:: t .,1 \:! k. 1\ () Ct (1 CHRONICLE BOOKS TO ORDER, CALL 800-722-6657 WWW.CHRONBOOKS.COM PUBLISH YOUR BOOK! Our FREE step-by-step guide to Self Publishing gives you all features and prices up-front. 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